Welcome To Mobilegeddon

Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 5 to 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed:

Big changes at Google (and big problems for many businesses) are happening this week. The non-news item is this: over 60% of Google’s traffic comes from mobile. Google is all about the user experience, so starting this week, the search engine will rank websites that are mobile/mobile-friendly ahead of others when a consumer is searching from their mobile/tablet. What does this mean? If you/your business doesn’t have a mobile website as of April 21, you will be penalized. While Google made this announcement about two months ago, many businesses are still not complying. Sadly.

Etsy is an online marketplace for handmade goods. And yes, there is plenty of “good” on Etsy. You can spend hours there finding the quirkiest of things (like pillows that are made out of classic comic book covers) to some pretty amazing paintings for your living room. The company went public last week, and their shares closed 86% higher on their first day of trading. The company raised over $287 million by selling 16.7 million shares before trading, valuing the company at nearly $1.8 billion. Stock went up close to $35 by mid morning. Etsy is now worth more than $3.5 billion. But guess what? Still, no profits. It’s not that new of a marketplace, and it’s always hard to understand the movement of Wall Street, but someone is going to need to figure out how Etsy (and not just the artisans who sell on the platform) is going to make real money now.

How many households in the US don’t have a landline? Before you answer that question, don’t think about New York City, Silicon Valley and the other major hubs. Think about the deep south, more rural areas or even more troubled areas (and yes, there are lots of those). Last week, GfK Mediamark Research sent out a report stating that 44% of US Households don’t have landlines. That’s staggering. This cell phone-only population has grown by 70% since 2010, when only 26% of US adults lived in cell-phone-only households.